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U.S.
aerospace employment has reached its lowest level since 1953,
dropping to 689,000 at the end of 2002. Based on the latest data
from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
figure should serve as a call to action for a national plan to
revitalize the aerospace workforce, according to Aerospace
Industries Association President and CEO John W. Douglass. The
workforce crisis facing the industry is accelerating, Douglass
said, and the trend must be reversed before the future health of
the industry is jeopardized.

Aerospace employment has dropped 106,000, or by 13 percent
since September 11, 2001, and it has fallen by nearly half, or
642,000 since December 1989, a period that marks the end of the
Cold War. Douglass said the workforce decline is the result of
several converging factors: the crisis in civil aviation and
commercial space business, industry mergers and acquisitions, and
the September 11 attacks. He said the Commission on the Future of
the U.S. Aerospace Industry has called for an interagency task
force to develop a national plan to make long-term investments in
education in math and science and to encourage students to become
part of the aerospace workforce.

Relief from regulation and lawsuits, or an upturn in the
need for air travel, air transport, military aviation, space
exploration and military/commercial development of space -- any of
these factors would, of course, enhance workforce opportunities in
the US aerospace/aviation businesses, as they are in, for instance,
communist China.

AIA has named the workforce crisis one of its 'Top Ten Issues
for 2003.'